Context Architecture

You can see how Tomcat employs an architecture that implements Sun's
specifications carefully. It is hard to understand context, though, if you
don't know the overall architecture.

TIP

When you see the word application on the exam, think context. So, the
application-initialization parameters are really those defined in the deployment
descriptor with the context-param element and retrieved with
ServletContext.getInitParameters.

A nice snapshot of the architecture is seen in Tomcat's primary
configuration file server.xml (CATALINA_HOME\conf\server.xml). Other vendor
containers also use configuration schemes, so if you aren't using Tomcat to
study for the exam, look at your product's configuration files. The
component elements shown in this chapter are nested corresponding to their
parent-child relationships with each other. Descriptive comments are edits from
comments in the sample server.xml file (ships with Tomcat). This file is not on
the exam, but the architecture that Listing 3.1 defines helps give a big
picture.

Listing 3.1 Sample Configuration Illustrates Architecture

<!--
A "Server" is a singleton element. It represents the
entire JVM. The server in turn may contain one or more "Service"
instances. The Server listens for a shutdown command
on the indicated port. Notice: A "Server" is not
itself a "Container".
-->
<Server port="8005" shutdown="SHUTDOWN" debug="0">
<!--
A "Service" is a collection of one or more "Connectors"
that share a single "Container" (and therefore the web
applications visible within that Container). Normally,
that Container is an "Engine". Notice: A "Service" is
not itself a "Container".
-->
<!-- Define the Tomcat Stand-Alone Service -->
<Service name="Tomcat-Standalone">
<!-- A "Connector" represents an endpoint by which requests
are received and responses are returned. Each Connector
passes requests on to the associated "Container" (normally
an Engine) for processing. By default, a non-SSL HTTP/1.1
Connector is established on port 8080.
<!-- non-SSL HTTP/1.1 Connector on port 8080 -->
<Connector className=
"org.apache.catalina.connector.http.HttpConnector"
port="8080" minProcessors="5" maxProcessors="75"
enableLookups="true" redirectPort="8443"
acceptCount="10" debug="0" connectionTimeout="60000"/>
<!-- You can also define an SSL HTTP/1.1 Connector on port
8443, an AJP 1.3 Connector on port 8009, a Proxied HTTP/1.1
Connector on port 8081, and non-SSL test connectors
on other ports such as 8082. -->
<!-- An Engine represents the entry point (within Catalina)
that processes every request. The Engine implementation
for Tomcat stand alone analyzes the HTTP headers included
with the request, and passes them on to the appropriate
Host (virtual host). -->
<!-- Define the default virtual host -->
<Host name="localhost" debug="0" appBase="webapps"
unpackWARs="true">
<!-- Logger shared by all Contexts related to this virtual
host. By default (when using FileLogger), log files are
created in the "logs" directory relative to $CATALINA_HOME.
If you wish, you can specify a different directory with the
"directory" attribute. Specify either a relative (to
$CATALINA_HOME) or absolute path to the desired directory.
-->
<Logger
className="org.apache.catalina.logger.FileLogger"
directory="logs" prefix="localhost_log."
suffix=".txt" timestamp="true"/>
<!-- Define properties for each web application such as
document roots in places other than the virtual host's
appBase directory. -->
<!-- Tomcat Examples Context -->
<Context path="/examples" docBase="examples" debug="0"
reloadable="true">
<Logger className="org.apache.catalina.logger.FileLogger"
prefix="localhost_examples_log." suffix=".txt"
timestamp="true"/>
</Context>
</Host>
</Engine>
</Service>

TIP

The word context is really just a name that gets mapped to the document root
of a Web application. For example, the context of the examples application is
/examples. The request URL
http://localhost:8080/examples/welcome.html
retrieves the file welcome.html from
CATALINA_HOME\webapps\examples\welcome.html.